Thursday, July 10, 2008

Lessons in NZ Art - Part 2a

In "Lovely Rita", painter Graham Sydney praises Rita Angus for her courage for wanting to live as an artist, because there weren't many artists making a living out of it during her time. He then went on to say something like there are so (too?) many artists and art talk now. I need to check the DVD to get his exact quote, but I couldn't help chuckling.

Coincidentally, I bought "Book Self" by New Zealand poet, novelist and critic C. K. Stead yesterday. I'm finding it a hard slog to plow through his "learned" articles, but somewhere in the first piece, he either said, or agreed with Martin Amis who said, something like "while literary criticism may not be good for literature, both literature and criticism are important (?) for civilization." I need to get back to the book find out what exactly he said, but, yeah.

See where I'm going? Thank goodness for even the small, minuscule, art practitioners having a platform to exchange ideas!

Edit: Only the first article in the Stead book turned out to be somewhat academic and weighty, the rest being extremely accessible.

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